Pulse Print

Print Management - The Smart Way to Print

2010-03-04T10:48:06Z

Print management is all about making sure that both clients and suppliers get the most out of their resources. While it’s often the case in business that you want to cut out the middle man if you can, this just isn’t the case when you’ve got a lot of expensive machinery that needs to be running constantly if it’s going to be cost effective. Printers know that a print management company will keep their presses in operation even if they don’t have time to generate the business themselves, clients know that a print management company will take the hassle out of ordering, and that they’ll be able to offer a better price for the same product. Doesn’t make any sense? Read on to find out how we do it…

Why it makes sense to use a print manager.

Using a print management company makes sure that you’re getting the most out of your resources.
Sheer convenience.
Tap into the expertise of people who handle print for a living & avoid disappointment.
The Bottom Line – use our purchasing power to reduce your bottom line.

Getting the most out of your resources

A printer’s view.

In an ideal world, everyone would have access to unlimited resources. We’d all have the time we needed to dedicate to all our projects, abundant funding for all our schemes, and the ability to increase our resources in the blink of an eye when a new project came along before scaling them back at no cost to cover the lulls. If this sounds anything like your working model then congratulations – you own the perfect business. The rest of us need to learn to make the most of all the resources at our disposal – wringing every last drop of value from them and getting maximum return from our investment.

The fact that we don’t live in an ideal world is the reason that commercial printers need print management companies like Pulse Print. A printing firm, burdened with the cost of running presses, paying employees & renting the huge amount of factory space they need to do their job, has two options for recouping their costs and running at a profit. They can raise their prices, or they can raise the number of jobs they’re processing, keep the presses running all the time, and use the resources they’ve already paid for to greater effect. Raising prices is a risky strategy, for obvious reasons, while hiring a sales force to increase the volume of jobs being done has it’s own costs attached. This is where print management firms come in handy for a commercial printer

A print management firm will work out deals with a range of suppliers to lower their profit margins on individual sales in return for a guaranteed stream of income. Rather than having to spend on expanding their sales teams, commercial printers make the calculation that it’s more cost effective to sell their products for less in exchange for the sheer volume of business that a print management firm will generate for them

When a client approaches us with a a quote request we’ll contact our suppliers to see what’s the best price we can get. Any one supplier we contact will know that we’ve put the exact same request to a number of their competitors, but they won’t have any idea who, or how much they’re going to quote. In order to guarantee their income stream, therefore, it’s in their interest to offer the best price they possibly can. It might not be worth their time to offer an outstandingly good price on your individual order, but if they know that we’ve got another twenty orders to fill that day, then it’s worth trimming the profit margin on one of them to increase their chances of securing the rest of the business.

A client’s view.

As of March 4th 2010 a google search for ‘online printer’ threw up this information:

It might have taken Google less than half a second to find them all, but how long is it going to take for you to find the best printer for you? A print management company like Pulse Print has done all the research already – we know who can be relied upon to keep their promises on turnaround and quality, and we know who to avoid like the proverbial. Our company exists purely to get the best deal possible for our clients, with a focus on customer service and smoothing out the niggles in the printing process. We’d like to say that this is just because we’re such nice guys, but nobody buys claims of pure altruism anymore… We focus on these things because happy customers who receive high-quality products for a reasonable price are more likely to use our services again in the future. Our suppliers specialise in keeping a printing press running, we specialise in building client relationships & finding the best solutions for their printing needs.

Convenience

Without wanting to labour the point, there are nearly one hundred million results for a search for online printers. By anyone’s standards that’s a ridiculous number. And it’s not like picking a printer is the final hurdle. In addition to our print brokerage we offer a comprehensive reprographics service, so when you send us your artwork (if you haven’t opted to have it designed professionally you can be sure that it will be checked for any problems before it’s committed to print, giving you the security to order with confidence. We have some of the best lead times in the business – because our suppliers are keen to keep us happy & gain a larger portion of our business – so if you need it yesterday you can be sure that we’ll do our utmost to get it to you as soon as possible. Most importantly, once you’ve handed your print job off to us we’ll make sure that you don’t need to worry about it any more. We’ll give you a delivery date, we’ll give you a number to call in the unlikely event of problems, and we’ll take it from there. It simply couldn’t get more convenient.

Experience + Expertise = Excellent Results

An end client might order print once or twice a week, if they order a lot of print. Far more likely, they’ll be ordering from time to time, with weeks between each order. Contrast that to the employees of a print management firm, who do this all day, every day. If there’s a niggle that the print process can throw up, we’ve seen it. If there’s a short cut that can be taken without compromising quality, we know about it. If there’s a price out there, we can beat it. Our company survives and thrives solely on the basis of our willingness and ability to keep learning about the industry, to find new suppliers, and to research ever more efficient ways of navigating the printing process – it’s not an overstatement to say that being ahead of the game is the bedrock of our livelihoods.

The Bottom Line

A print management company like Pulse Print can offer consistently better prices than you’ll be able to get directly from a printer. It really is as simple as that; compare the price of our Premium Business Cards with those offered by our competitors to see what we mean.

At the end of the day, a print management company putting through twenty to thirty orders with a printer each day has more purchasing power than an individual who makes an order once every couple of months. They also have a wide range of experience of the common (and less common!) issues that come up during the printing process, so they’re better equipped to offer snap responses to small scale issues & more considered answers to the bigger problems. By putting your printing in the hands of a dedicated print management company you get everything done, all under one roof, at a better price than you’re likely to find if you go direct to a printer, and with the weight of the print management companies client/supplier relationship backing you up. You’ll have a single nominated contact for your entire print contract – a go-to guy that will have instant access to all your details instantly, for maximum convenience. You’ll also benefit from our experience & expertise being brought to bear on your project from start to finish.

When all’s said and done.

You wouldn’t use a hammer to drive a screw, and you wouldn’t MOT your car yourself. Your printing is no different – if you use the right tool for the job you’ll get better results, for a better price, with less hassle. Pulse Print UK, is that tool. If you want to get the job done, get in touch.

Take 4 Small Steps to Improving Your Marketing

2010-02-08T15:49:48Z

Being the best in the business is one thing, being recognised as the best in the business is another. Having the first means that every customer you get will be pleased with what they get, which might get you a couple of extra orders through word of mouth; but having the second means that your business is synonymous with your industry, which blows your competitors out of the water. Getting that level of recognition doesn’t just happen… it takes a lot of work. Fortunately for you, Pulse Print is here to do a lot of it for you.

What if I don’t think my marketing needs fixing?

Let’s say you wanted to be able to listen to your music on the go. Would you log on to the internet, find a search engine and look up portable music players? Probably not. More likely, you’d google ‘IPod’ and see what came up. That’s the magic of a world class brand identity – Google isn’t just a search engine anymore, it’s the search engine. If you’re using Yahoo, Altavista, Hotbot (remember that one? I had to think for a couple of minutes to remember the name…) or, for some reason best known to yourself, Bing, then you’re in a minority. The fact that Google provides the best search results is almost incidental – what’s more important is the perception that it’s providing the best search results. If you couldn’t find something on Google you’d assume that it’s not on the internet (or that you’re not searching for it correctly), but if you can’t find it on Bing… well, that’s because Bing’s not a very good search engine isn’t it?

One key reason why Google so comprehensively won the battle of the search engines is that it found something to specialise in (search) and got that right before it expanded into new territories. Equally important, though, was the strength of it’s branding. The Google logo is instantly recognisable, which is a good start, but their branding is stronger than that, as their Christmas marketing campaign for Chrome (the Google Browser – which paves the way for a full blown operating system to take on Windows later this year) shows:

Even if you’d never heard of Chrome, even if you had no idea that Google was anything more than a search engine, you’d know at a glance that this was an ad for the world’s best known search engine. The fact that the logo is relatively small, and tucked away in the bottom left, is pretty much irrelevant – those colours, that expanse of white space, those clean lines and abstract images. It’s Google, it’s got to be Google. Unless your company has the same level of instant brand identity, and has achieved synonymity with the industry in the same way as Google, then there’s room for improvement. Remember that Google had never done a widespread marketing campaign in the real world before – this was exported directly from the internet to the real world in one fell swoop.

1. Building a World Beating Brand.

Ok, Google rhapsody over. Just keep them in mind as the ideal company: as far as marketing goes – that’s what you should be aiming at. Here at Pulse Print we can’t guarantee to make your company a giant on that scale (not just yet, anyway), but we can help you get the best out of your branding. The first step to fixing and optimising your marketing is to define a brand identity for yourself.

It’s surprising how many people who are otherwise excellent at getting the best out of their business just assume that a brand identity is an organic thing. Believe us, it really isn’t. If you want your business identity to stick in people’s minds you need to be setting your messages and your means of communicating them, and you need to be consistently pushing the same buttons to generate a subconscious association between your business and your industry. This consistency is key, so let’s have a think about how you can achieve it:

Colours

Let’s take a look at the Pulse Print logo:

At the risk of sounding like a Marks & Spencers ad, that isn’t just red. That’s Pulse Print red. We’ve got a clearly defined colour palette, with the exact values for reproducing it on screen or in print recorded and written up for everyone in the office to reference. It sounds like such a small detail, but by using exactly the same shade of red on everything to do with Pulse Print we subtly build a brand identity. More importantly, we maintain an image of professionalism and consistency which wouldn’t be conveyed if we just approximated our reds.

The message is this: take care of the details, or the details will take care of you. Whether you’re starting a business from scratch, or you’re reassessing an existing brand, take some time to work out the precise shades that will form your corporate colour palette. You’ll thank yourself for putting in the work later.

Fonts

Again, you need to take some time to sort out your font palette. Most businesses will need a Sans Serif font (one without any wiggly bits on the ends of the letters – best used for logos and headlines in adverts) and a Serif font (one with the wiggly bits – best used for body text in ads) at least:

A Sans Serif font (Helvetica Neue Bold) A Serif Font (Perpetua Bold)

Most fonts (those that don’t ship with an operating system as standard) will cost you money to buy. It might seem like an unnecessary expense – there are places that you can get most fonts for free – but please, please think of buying a font family as an investment in your company. You wouldn’t ask someone to design you an advert and then not pay them, so why would you take a font that someone’s spent hours (days, weeks, in some cases months) perfecting? Make a good choice of fonts and buy them through a reputable website – you’ll sleep easier knowing that you’ve done the right thing!

Your Logo

Logos are a constant source of misery for designers. It’s not enough to send a designer a random file with your logo in it – no matter how good they are, they won’t be able to do anything with it. When you’re deciding on a logo (which we’d recommend you do with a professional graphic designer, even if you do everything else yourself) get it designed as a Vector graphic, preferably using Adobe’s Illustrator, as that’s the industry standard. A vector graphic can be scaled to any size without degrading in quality (check out our article on Pixels, Dots and Print Resolution if you’re not sure why this is important) and should be kept in a safe place on your computer – preferably with over-write protection so that it can’t be accidently ruined. Whenever you have a new project on hand, whether it’s a promotional flyer printing job, a new set of business cards or a high-volume brochure printing job, send your designer a copy of the vector file containing your logo. They’ll be able to use that on any printed or online marketing material, and having it to hand will make both of your lives easier.

Obviously it goes without saying that your logo should incorporate the colour palette you’ve already worked out, as well as the fonts that you’ve bought for your brand. We’ll say it anyway though – we like to be thorough.

Bringing it all together.

So now you have your colours, your fonts and your logos. You’ve essentially got your brand prepared and ready for deployment – well done! The trick now is to make sure that all the elements that combine to make up your brand are properly used, by whomever you choose to do your design work in the future.

The most effective way to do this is to set a branding guideline document, much like the one below:

A branding guideline document like this takes less than ten minutes to set up, and will save you hours (not to mention huge amounts of money) when you’re getting marketing materials produced. Speak to a professional graphic designer about getting it done, and you’ve got an instant reference point for all future marketing.

2. Review Your Existing Marketing Materials.

Now that you’ve sorted out your brand identity, it’s time to look at the marketing materials you’ve already got. The chances are that they’ll be roughly within the guidelines you’ve set (unless you decided to re-think your branding completely, in which case there’s no point in reviewing your existing stuff – just throw it out now), but it’s time to be ruthless about things. The question you have to ask yourself is this: do my marketing materials conform to my new branding guidelines? If the answer is ‘yes’ then fantastic, give yourself a pat on the back, because you’ve managed to keep within branding guidelines before they even existed. If, on the other hand, the answer is either a straight up ‘no’ or a ‘well, sort of’ then you need to start thinking about getting them replaced as soon as possible. The only exception to this rule is marketing materials which are specifically aimed at promoting a limited time offer, or something else out of the ordinary course of business for your company.

You may not need to get rid of everything and start from scratch immediately. If it makes more sense to do a gradual roll-out of your new brand identity (maybe starting with business cards and moving on from there) then that’s ok; just bear in mind that a gradual roll-out won’t be as attention grabbing as a once and for all switch. If you’re going down the path of a gradual roll out (maybe you’ve just got a large batch of catalogues printed and you can’t bring yourself throw them out and start again) then you should set a deadline for the roll out to be complete, and make sure that you stick to it. By setting a deadline, you’ll mitigate against the loss of momentum that is an inevitable drawback of the gradual roll out strategy.

3. Decide how you’re going to use your new branding.

You probably already have a good idea of the marketing strategies which offer good returns for your company. Now’s the time to review and decide whether there are things that you haven’t made the most of yet, or marketing that you’ve been pumping money into, but aren’t seeing good enough returns on anymore. It’s also the time to order new versions of your most successful marketing materials which are in line with your newly defined brand. Here are some ideas:

If you mainly build your business through personal contacts, you’ll be needing business cards – it might be worth considering something a little off the wall: plastic or metal business cards are neat and help you stand out from the crowd. Check out our inspiration blog on Awesome Business Card Designs for some ideas and get in touch with us to let us know what you’re looking for.
If you’re at the stage where you’re building through print marketing, whether that’s in the form of posters, small booklets or ads in the local or national press then get in touch and ask about our design and print packages. Whether we’ve conducted your branding exercise or not, we guarantee that we’ll be able to provide you with the most affordable high-quality design and printing package you’ll find.
If you’re running a business that focuses tightly on a small local area (an estate agent, for example, or a restaurant) it might be worth arranging a flyer mailing drop to houses within your catchment area. It could be a simple booklet with your current menu, or the properties you’re trying to let or sell. It could be a run of business card sized flyers advertising a taxi service. It could be anything, really. As I said, you probably know what’s worked for you in the past, but this is an ideal opportunity for you explore new options and push your new brand out to new clients.

4. Get it planned, get it budgeted, get it done!

It seems so obvious, and maybe it is, but you’re never going to launch a rejuvenation of your brand unless you set time aside to plan it and actually get it done in that time frame. What are your aims? When do you want this roll out to be complete? Have you got the funds to undertake the project, and if not, will you within the time frame you’ve set yourself? These are just a few of the questions you’ll need to answer in order to effect a timely and successful improvement in your marketing strategy. It’s not hard to do, but it does require a little attention and forward planning – the rewards are well worth it, though!

How we can help

You’ll already know that we can help with the design and printing, but did you know that we’re also rather dab hands at branding exercises? get in touch with us by email or phone to find out more about our bespoke branding service!

The True Cost of Online Printing

2010-02-02T16:24:17Z

Online printing companies have revolutionised the industry, cutting the price of printing and allowing customers a breathtaking range of choice. The downside of online printing is that you, as the customer, need to be extra careful when picking a printer. A good online printer will be open about their prices, reliable with their delivery, and courteous in their service; but a bad one will give you nothing but headaches. Pulse Print was set up to take on the big boys of the printing industry and restore the customer to their rightful place at the heart of the printing service – which is why we’re giving you all the information you need to help pick the right online printing company for you.

Print Pricing and Quotations

The vast majority of online printers will offer you their products at the best price they possibly can. Most of the time that will be considerably better than the price you’d get if you went into local high street printer, simply because the overheads associated with running an online printing company are much lower than the overheads involved in running a real-world store. What you’re very unlikely to find is a printing company who can undercut the costs of their online competitors by the same margin as they can the high street. All of us at Pulse Print have previously worked in jobs where we were the printing client, rather than the provider, and we all agree that online printing is the kind of industry where you should ALWAYS look a gift horse in the mouth.

Perhaps you’ve found a printing quote online that seems to be exceptionally good, better by 20% than any of the alternatives – unless you’ve worked with that company before, make sure that you’ve checked that your quote is all inclusive before you commit to using them. Many online printing companies will quote you a great headline price, but won’t tell you the delivery costs until you’ve done a bit more digging (this tends to be especially true of online printing companies which provide a fully automated service, and make it hard to speak to a real person); we’ve even seen instances where VAT is added automatically to any order, regardless of whether the product is VAT exempt or not – requiring the customer to click ‘No VAT’ and hoping to catch people out (we’ve covered VATable and zero-rated/exempt print products in another of our blog posts – so do double check whether you should be paying VAT or not)

A trustworthy online printing company will be proud of their prices, and won’t have anything to hide from their customers. If you’re shown a headline price that seems suspiciously low it’s worth clicking ‘Add to basket’, or whatever, and see what comes up in the checkout section of the site – because it’s most likely that this is where you’ll be confronted with the hidden costs. If a company is willing to conceal it’s true prices until you’re already pretty much committed to the purchase, then you should probably be asking yourself what else they’re keeping quiet – lengthy turnaround times? low quality? poor materials? Who knows? All we can say is that people don’t tend to be unscrupulous in one area and then all above board on everything else…

At the end of the day, the online printing industry obeys the same principles of competition as any other commercial sector. If there was one company which could actually consistently undercut everyone else by huge margins then one of two things would happen: either they’d secure every job that was going and force all their competitors out of business, or their competitors would find a way to match their prices. Just as Tesco keep an eye on what Asda are charging, so each online print company is aware of their competitors’ offers and prices. Certainly there’s a range of prices available, but it’s very narrow – variations are based usually on how much of a profit margin the printer in question is adding to each product, not on the cost of the raw materials. So while you might find an online print company which appears to undercut our premium business card prices or our hourly rate for graphic design by a long way, we’d be surprised if you’re getting the whole story – either the specifications aren’t the same (even if they’ve got the same description) or there’s additional costs to come.

When a saving isn’t really a saving.

Whatever you’re buying, you usually save money per item by ordering in volume. This is especially true of the print industry, where the majority of a job’s costs are in the set up, rather than the printing itself. Decent printers will pass on the saving to their customers – so that 5000 Premium A6 Flyers won’t cost you twice as much as 2500 of the same product. While it makes sense for the customer to take advantage of price breaks like this, it’s also worth keeping in mind that it’s only worth it if you’re sure that you can use the extra. This is especially true on bigger jobs, where there’s an upper limit on what you can actually use. Yes, ordering 2,000 booklets rather than 1000 might bring the unit price down from 60 pence per copy to 55 pence, but if you only need 1000 copies, and the rest are going to take up space and never get used, then all you’re achieving is ripping yourself off and giving yourself a storage problem!

This is really all about research and knowing your needs. Some printing companies will try to convince you that you should disregard your estimates of what you actually need and go for the price break that kicks in if you order ‘just’ twice what you wanted in the first place. In the case of promotional flyers that might make sense, as there isn’t much of a difference in price, but it pays to be sure that the price break is actually worth going for when you’re placing your order. Again, this is a trick that tends to be used by fully automated printing websites, where there’s no option to talk to a person and therefore less accountability.

Automated Ordering Processes vs Human Interaction

It’s strange, but while most people have a gut reaction against automated service processes, many will actively avoid talking to a salesperson when they’re buying something. Maybe that’s because they’re worried about high pressure sales tactics, but we all know that in an online market, with such a lot of choice, there’s no point in even trying to strong-arm people into buying something.

Faced with the failure of traditional tactics to deal with an online marketplace, a lot of online companies (not just printers) have reduced their sales force, saving money, and adopted a new tactic for maximising their profits. Let’s call it ‘giving the customer (almost) what they want’. It takes advantage of people’s natural aversion to talking to salespeople, and it makes sure that more of your money ends up in the coffers of your printer. Best of all (from the unscrupulous online printer’s point of view) it takes full advantage of the limitations of a streamlined automated process.

Imagine you were looking to have company branded bookmarks printed. A fully automated system might offer you only one option for your printing, or a limited range of quantities. You can bet your bottom dollar that the standard product listed on an online printing company’s website will be the one that makes them the biggest profit (I include us in this – it makes perfect business sense to make the automatic option the one that we make a good return on). Where a good online printing company will differ from a less-good one is in giving you the opportunity to go off the menu. For example, every product listed on Pulse Print UK gives you information on how to get in touch with us to discuss your order in more detail; every page has a link to our online LivePerson chat facility at the top. We want you to talk to us about your order, whether you can find exactly what you want on the site, or if you’re looking for a bespoke quote. We’re not going to hide behind a fully automated process if you want to come and talk to us!

The advantage of having the option to talk to a real person is that you can let them know exactly what you’re looking for. There’s no chance that they can artificially boost their margins by giving you almost what you’ve asked for and billing you for stuff you don’t want or need. If a company’s offering 5000 Premium A5 Flyers on 350GSM Glossy stock, but you want them on Silk, or at 250GSM, then you should be able to ask for that. Even if they have to come back to you and say that they can’t offer you exactly what you asked for because it’s not cost effective, you have the right to be told that, rather than being railroaded into ordering something you don’t want.

Company Guarantees

Whether you’re using an online printing company, or a high street store, the chances are that you’ll be handing over your money before the print job is done. This isn’t anything to worry about, per se (after all, when you go for your weekly shopping you have to pay for it before you can start eating it), but the fact that your printers are asking you to trust them means that they should be willing to put their money where their mouth is and guarantee a certain standard of quality, service, cost and delivery. Again, we don’t want to brag, but we make a price guarantee, a delivery guarantee, a service guarantee and a quality guarantee core to our business – they’re all featured on the About Us section of the website. We’re making the promises because we know we can fulfill them – and if there’s another company that’s shy about doing the same then we’d have cause to wonder why.

Other hidden catches

OK, so we’ve covered quality and satisfaction guarantees, we’ve covered hidden costs, we’ve had a look at the benefits of being able to talk about your order with a real live person and we’ve thought about whether you’re ordering more than you really need just to line the pockets of your printer. There can’t possibly be anything else, right? Surely if you’ve exhausted this list you can be confident when placing a print order, right? Well, nearly… But there are a couple more things you might want to check before going ahead.

Outsourcing abroad.

Confession time: there is a way for online print companies to get their raw materials on the cheap – ordering from abroad. Sounds OK as long as the price is right, doesn’t it? Well there are reasons to be wary:

If a company is UK based, but outsourcing it’s work abroad, how much control can they really expect to have over quality? If you can’t see it, you can’t guarantee it. There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing in itself, lots of printers do it for jobs that they don’t have the specific equipment for, but at the end of the day your supplier should be working with people that they can conveniently visit and speak to as often as necessary in case anything needs to be sorted out quickly.
Assuming that the customer is based in Swindon, and the printer is based in Oxford, how long should it take for an order to be processed and delivered? We offer 3 working days as standard on most products – one for the printing, one to let the ink dry, get the product finished (trimmed to the right size, bound if appropriate, that kind of thing) and one to get it to the client by courier. But if we were getting the printing done in China? Well, it might just take a little longer. Be especially suspicious if the company you’re thinking of using tells you that they’ll give you a delivery date after you’ve made the order – as with everything that’s gone before, a lack of transparency is never a good sign!
Bear in mind that different countries have different industry standards. That’s not to say that one set is better than any other – it’s just to say that whoever is actually doing your printing will be aiming to meet the local standard, rather than the standard you might be expecting. Whether or not the printing standards (ink usage, or drying time, or any one a load of other technical bits) of one area are objectively superior to those of another doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, what you want is to be happy with your product, and that means that you want it to conform to your expectations.

“Subject to sight of the artwork.”

Thankfully this isn’t one that actually comes up all that often, otherwise online printing companies would be about as trusted as lawyers, estate agents and used car salesmen. It’s still worth knowing about though, just in case. Most printers will include a line on their quotes about the price being “Subject to the sight of the artwork”, which is fair enough – if they’ve quoted you for a standard 4 colour print job, and you’ve then included a spot colour on your artwork (which is more expensive for them to do) then they need to be able to pass the extra cost along to you so that they don’t lose money.

Where this legitimate disclaimer can be a problem, though, is when your printer uses it as an excuse to bundle an extra load of costs onto your invoice, without letting you know until you get the bill. Often, for one reason or another, people who supply their own artwork don’t submit it in a form that’s ready for print (that won’t apply to you though, because we’ve written a handy guide to preparing your artwork for print for you you have a look at). When this happens it’s usually easy enough for the repro department to fix, but there will be a cost for fixing it. At Pulse Print we believe that the best practice is to offer a free check of all artwork submitted to us and to let the customer know what they need to change to make it print ready. We’ll offer to fix it for you for a small fee, but we’re not going to do the work and surreptitiously add an item to your bill. That’s not on.

Where you see the disclaimer “Subject to sight of the artwork” it’s worth asking your contact at the printer what exactly they mean by that, to make sure that you’re not going to get stung by unexpected repro costs that you could have avoided by fixing the artwork yourself. Then again, if you’re looking at a company that won’t let you talk to a real person anyway, you might have a problem on that score…

A Disclaimer

We’re an online printing company, we’re well aware of this. Presumably you know that too (the name’s a bit of a giveaway). Obviously we’d love it if after reading this article you decide to choose us to do your printing, but we’ve been careful to be balanced when putting together our thoughts on the online printing industry. Please contact us if you think that we can improve this article in any way (or leave us a comment below!)

Photo printing options: Premium Glossy Prints, Canvas Prints, Large Format Posters

2010-01-28T10:26:34Z

Digital photography is all about never missing a shot. That’s all well and good, but sometimes you’ve got a photo so good that it demands beautiful presentation – leaving it to languish on the computer just won’t do it justice. At Pulse Print we offer a range of stunning presentation options, from premium quality glossy prints to canvas printing and other large format prints for decoration. The larger format prints are ideal for imbuing your home with a sense of your personality and tailoring your space to fit your style.

From screen to print

It’s all very well having a hundred and fifty million photos on your computer, but it’s fair to say they’re probably not shown off to their full potential on there. If you’ve got the talent to take gorgeous photos you should be making the most of it by using your photos to add a sense of personality to your space. For all that everyone in the world seems to have a digital camera now, not everyone can use it. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

Going to Boots and getting your photos printed is an option, as is signing up to one of the many online photo print sites that have mushroomed recently. At the end of the day, though, all you’re likely to end up with is a pile of glossy photos shoved into the back of the draw. Sure, they’re off your hard-drive now, but now all they’re doing is taking up space, and they’re not getting looked at any more than they were before. Clearly it’s time to get innovative with your photo printing, and here’s some ideas for how you could do it…

Custom Printed Photo Albums

Once was a time that the concept of a photo album was nothing short of horrifying: a collection of faded polaroid snaps, with detail less obvious than grain, and an instantly accessible visual catalogue of dubious fashion choices and dreadful haircuts throughout the years. I don’t know about you, but just the sight of something like this:

still puts me right off my lunch.

But that was then and this is now. These days you can get crystal clear digital images and have them printed in a high-quality custom printed photo book, beautifully bound and ready for the coffee table. Whether it’s family pics or a full blown photography portfolio, there’s no reason why the quality afforded to high-end publishers should be denied to the rest of us. We’re all budding photographers now, and we shouldn’t have to put up with having our shots ruined by low quality printing! Online print companies (like Pulse Print UK) can take your photos and print them into high-quality presentation books with a wide range of potential finishes: from hard cover, to high-gloss interior pages and beyond. We believe that your photos are expressions of yourself and your memories, and that they should be presented as such.

That’s the way to do it!

Canvas Printing

In the last few years it’s becoming increasingly fashionable to get your photos made into artwork for the home or office (really, check the IKEA catalogue…). While at first people were going for large format poster printing it soon became apparent that this wasn’t always the most cost effective method of getting your photos to your walls. What we’ve seen the rise of most recently is printing onto canvas – it’s durable, it’s more cost effective for short runs, and canvas printing is generally agreed to be a classier way of presenting your photos as works of art.

Again, whether you’re a budding professional, complete with DSLR, or a snap happy archivist of your family life, canvas printing is a great way to take your photos to the next level – stop treating your photos like meaningless computer files and start using them to make your home that little more beautiful.

Canvas photo printing is a specialised service, and whatever anyone tells you there’s no one size fits all option. Just because a company can offer standard price for canvas printing, without having had a look at your artwork first, doesn’t mean that they can guarantee you the quality that you want – and there’s no point having a low quality canvas print on your wall. For a service like this, a printer should be getting sight of your artwork before they give you a price and giving you a quote based on what they see. If this isn’t the level of service you’re getting, then you could be getting ripped off on price, or you could be getting bog-standard quality. What you certainly won’t be getting is your photos treated with the respect they deserve. That’s why we don’t put a one-size fits all price on our site for this service: get in touch with one of our account managers and they’ll work with you to get a canvas printing that’s tailored to you, and only you.

T-Shirt printing

Now this is fun. Got a birthday party coming up? Hen night? Any other occasion where you might want to get an embarrassing photo of a friend emblazoned across a bunch of t-shirts for the world to see? Custom t-shirt printing is your friend…

There are limits to how complex a photo can be in order for it to be printed onto a t-shirt, and as usual you can expect that greater complexity will lead to a higher price, but it’s definitely worth looking into if you’re planning a big event or celebration, as custom printed t-shirts both make the event itself that bit more special and serve as a memento down the line (plus, you can never have enough bed t-shirts!) This is another service that a service-oriented printer will put the time and effort into – customers who get back dodgy looking printed t-shirts, poorly cut from low quality fabric, tend not to be the most satisfied people in the world. As with canvas printing, a good printer will keep in touch throughout the ordering process and maintain that contact throughout the print and delivery processes as well. Where presentation and durability is key, value can’t be defined by price alone – so be wary of just going with the cheapest t-shirt printing service you can find, because you’ll only get what you pay for.

How to Order with Pulse Print

2010-01-25T11:07:27Z

Ordering your printing & design with Pulse Print couldn’t be simpler. And we’ll prove it with our handy, one minute guide to ordering.

Option one: Keep it automated.

If you’re looking to order outside office hours, or you’re just in a rush to get things done, why not use our automated system? Have a browse around our product pages – we’ve got a comprehensive list of our most popular products, along with prices for the most commonly ordered styles and quantities. Once you’ve decided what you’d like, just click on the ‘Buy Now’ button to be taken through to our secure online payment area (powered by Paypal) and fill in the short form. Once you’ve completed payment we’ll redirect you to our artwork upload page, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Our repro team will check over your artwork as soon as possible (we make sure that all uploaded artwork is checked within 24 hours of upload) and let you know if there are any problems that might disrupt the print process. You can avoid problems by making sure that your artwork conforms to our guidelines before you send it to us. We’ll get your order onto the first available print run and let you know when you can expect delivery

Option two: Get in touch!

At Pulse Print we love to help our customers, and we know that there are a million reasons why you might need to talk to a human being, rather than using an automated ordering process. You can get in touch with us via the contacts page, by calling 0800 046 7670 or by using our Live Chat function. However you get in touch, we guarantee you’ll be dealing with a real live human being when you contact us.

Whether you need us to sort out your artwork, or you’re looking to order something that’s not on the menu, just get in touch and let us help you out.

Things to remember

Our print runs go off at 10.30am each day. In order to get on the print run for that day you’ll need to have sorted everything out on your order by then, otherwise we’ll have to get it onto the next day’s run. We do try to help out where we can, but it costs an awful lot to hold up a print run once it’s begun, and the longer we hold a run, the more chance that it’ll have an impact on our other customers. So please help us to help all our clients by making sure that everything’s cleared on time.
Before we commit anything to print we’ll need to have received your approval of the artwork and payment for the print and (where applicable) design. We can extend credit to a limited number of clients in special circumstances, but please be aware that you’ll have to make arrangements with one of our Account Managers before we can offer you credit.
If you’re ordering design as well as printing please do factor the time required to do your design work when placing your order. We’re good, but we’re not good enough to do a two hour design job in twenty minutes!
Our turnaround times on our most popular products are listed on the appropriate product pages. In many cases we can offer an express service, which takes a working day off the delivery time, for a small fee. Please get in touch to find out if we can offer you this service.

Self cover explained in under a minute

2010-01-22T11:03:48Z

When you’re getting magazine printing, brochure printing, or any other form of multi-page printing, you’ll probably be asked if you want to save money by going with a self cover. Show your printer you mean business by being comfortable with their jargon and you’ll earn their respect, which usually means better service and lower prices.

What does self cover mean?

When you’re ordering multi-page printing for a magazine, brochure, or any sort of booklet your printer can either treat it all as a single job, or they can split it so that the covers are handled separately to the main printing job. If it’s all handled as a single job, with the covers being printed on the same paper and in the same colour space as the interior pages, then you’ve got a self cover project. If you’re looking for a stiffer cover, or a full colour cover on an otherwise black and white project, then you’ve got a separate cover.

Getting printing quotes.

When you contact printers to ask for a quote you’ll need to let them know how many pages you want. If it’s a self cover then you’ll need to tell them the total number of pages including covers (so a 32 page booklet would be “36 pages, self cover”). If you want the cover to be printed separately you’ll need to specify the number of interior pages and specify the cover separately (so the 32 page booklet would be “32 pages + 4 page cover”). Each of these bits of information will need to be matched with specifications for colour options and paper weight as well.

GSM and paperweight explained in brief

2010-01-21T17:17:25Z

Whether you’re ordering flyer printing, business card printing, or any other commercial printing, your printer is going to ask you what GSM you want at some stage. If you’ve got no idea what GSM stands for, read on – it’ll only take a minute!

What does GSM mean?

GSM stands for ‘Grams per Square Metre’, It’s a measurement of paper quality which allows for printers to be far more precise than they could be with wooly terms like ‘thick’, ‘thin’ and ‘kinda in the middle’. As the name suggests, it tells you how much a square metre of the paper or card you’re using would weigh (in grams, believe it or not). Although everyone tends to think in terms of thickness, with premium print being on thicker paper, it’s a good means of standardising the business and making sure that customers know what they’re getting.

How does it work in real life?

We know that it’s not easy to visualise a square metre of paper (although it’s pretty fun: give it a go). So here’s a basic layman’s translation of some of the most common paperweights.

350GSM – This is what you might expect a reasonable quality business card to be printed on (or a Pulse Print flyer!).
180 to 250 GSM – Like a mid-market magazine cover.
130 to 170 GSM – A good quality promotional poster. Something that you’d expect to last a couple of months in most conditions.
90GSM – Mid-Market magazine inner pages
35 to 55 GSM – Most newspapers
Less than 35 GSM – If someone’s trying to sell you this as anything other than rice paper, you want to be reporting them for attempted theft.

Special Finishes: Spot UV

2009-12-10T11:24:42Z

Want to make your premium print stand out from the crowd? Looking for an effect that’ll set you apart from your competitors? Why not try a Spot UV varnish?

Let’s have little bit of a vocab lesson…

Rather than explaining terms as we go through, which makes for a… disjointed… (read: ‘rubbish’) article, we’ll explain some key terms up here, so that you can refer back as and when. If you’re already a bit of a print genius, and Spot UV varnishing is the only thing you don’t know about, then feel free to skip on down.

Varnish: is essentially a clear ink that can be applied in a variety of thicknesses over print. On the most basic level it improves the durability of your print, preventing the ink from rubbing off and keeping the paper or card from wrinkling or tearing, but as we’ll see below it can also be used to achieve some awesome visual and textural effects.
Finish: is any effect that’s applied to your print after it’s been produced. That could be an all over varnish, a spot varnish, foil-blocking, or die-cuts (all of which I’m sure we’ll get to in a later post!)
Spot: is used to indicate that a finish is only going to be applied to certain areas (or spots) of the total printed area.
UV: is the thickest varnish available, and is most often used to make your print look really glossy and vivid.

Got it? Great. Let’s move on…

What is Spot UV?

Spot UV is a high-gloss finish applied to a specific area of your print, as in the example below:

What we’ve got here is a piece of packaging that’s been printed on a matt varnished card stock before having a Spot UV varnish applied over part of the logo. As you can see, it creates a striking balance between the main body of the box and the logo which instantly grabs the eye. For simple images like this applying a Spot UV varnish can be a great way of increasing the visual impact of your print.

How does it work?

How we do it

Although Spot UV draws attention elements of your design, and should be thought about when you’re starting your design work (or writing a brief for your designer), you should remember that it’s not a part of the design per se. Rather, it’s a post-printing operation which can, like any other coating, be applied ‘online’ (immediately after the ink is applied to the stock) or ‘offline’ (on a separate machine, some time after the printing job has been done). In either case it’s an intricate process – as your printers will have to supply their machine with information on the exact spots to apply the varnish. It’s essentially a tooling job, and you should bear this in mind when deciding whether or not to go for it. A more general gloss coating, whether UV or not, will cost considerably less as there’s so much less information to be supplied.

Spot UV’s can’t be added to artwork by your designer – although they will create the guides that the printers will use to apply the varnish –and require your printer to call into play a specialist piece of machinery (which blasts the varnish with UV light to dry it out). As both designer and printer will be doing more work and, in the case of the printer, using an expensive bit of kit to give you the effect you’re after you should expect the price you pay to inflate accordingly. For this reason it’s worth thinking in detail about the purpose of your print before you opt for a Spot UV – is it really going to be worth it on flyer printing or poster printing? Probably not, as they’re intended to be read for the information – with the aim of drumming up support, attendence or business – and then discarded. Something that you expect your audience to return to again and again, on the other hand – your business card, your company’s annual report, the prospectus for your school or something similar – well, that might be worth the extra expense…

What are the drawbacks?

Obviously the main drawback is going to be cost. Prices increase according to complexity, rather than the amount of space the varnish covers. It’s a bit counter intuitive, so let’s do it with some pictures. Here’s a simple business card design:

We’ll use a red wash to compare varnish coverage:

So, although more varnish has been used on the left then on the right, the right will cost more to produce.

The other drawback is turnaround – obviously the more that you ask your printers to do, the longer it’s going to take them to do it. If you’re planning on getting a Spot UV varnish, make sure you ask how much time this will add to the standard turnaround quoted.

What does a Spot UV varnish add?

Instant visual impact
Multi-sensory impact – try running your hand over the images above, you should be able to feel the difference… Actually, don’t really. It’ll smudge your screen. Head on over to our contact page or give us a call on (01865) 304 071 to request a sample pack
Adds vibrancy to the colours of, for example, your company logo
Creates an impression in the mind of your audience that you’re a little bit different, rather than a generic company

If these benefits outweigh the added cost of adding a Spot UV, you should definitely consider it – it’s simply the best way of making a memorable first impression with your premium print products.

WIN 500 Free Luxury Business Cards This Christmas

2009-12-02T10:44:01Z

To celebrate the official launch of our Pulse Print Blog we’re giving you the chance to win 500 premium quality, double sided, full colour business cards, absolutely free. Competition closes on January the 5th 2010 so hurry up and enter!

How To Enter Our Free Business Card Competition

Seeing as this is the first competition we’ve run, we’re going to make it super easy for you to enter into the draw. All you’ve got to do is sign up to receive our super useful print and design blog (guaranteed spam-free – just lots of helpful articles designed to de-mystify the print and design buying process) before January 5th and you’re in with a chance of winning. That’s it. It’s as easy as that. Could we have made it any simpler?

Well, sure, we could have put a big red button on the site with a link to subscribe…

The Prize

The cards we’re offering are:

Printed on extra heavyweight 400gsm card (most people print business cards on 300gsm – we use that for flyer printing!)
Double sided
Printed in full colour
Matt laminated for extra durability
Delivered to your door within a week

As we said in an earlier post about awesome business card designs:

“Business cards are one of the most important aspects of your visual identity. They’re the first thing people see when they meet you and a cool business design can speak volumes about the creativity and professionalism of you and your business.”

So it’s probably worth getting them right. The winner of the competition will receive a free business card design and 500 copies of their new business card digitally printed on high-quality matt finished stock. Check out our business card printing page for specific details.

How will I know if I’ve won?

We’ll be announcing the winner on January 6th via the blog, and who knows, maybe another competition as well… In the meantime, if you’re bamboozled by bindings, perplexed by paperweights or just sick of jargon (that last one didn’t really work…) then get in touch with us and suggest an article!

Printer’s jargon: Bleed

2009-11-30T14:36:36Z

In today’s article, we look at what’s probably the most unfriendly sounding bit of jargon ever to come out of the print industry…

My printer’s yelling ‘bleed’ at me, what have I done wrong?

Relax, it’s pretty unlikely that your chosen printer actually wants to hurt you (unless they have REALLY high expectations of their clients.) ‘Bleed’ is one of those terms that’s instantly recognisable to anyone who has worked with print before, but leaves anyone outside the industry stumped. Here at Pulse Print UK we want to help de-mystify printing for those not lucky enough to work in the business, so that you get perfect print every time.

Ok, so what’s a bleed?

Essentially, its an extension of your design that is intended to be cut off before the product is delivered to you.
This might sound confusing, in which case you should probably read on!

First off, you’ll need to know a little bit about how commercial printing works. We’ll assume that you want 5000 Heavyweight A6 Flyers printed as an example, but what follows is true of pretty much all printed products. As always, if you’re not sure, give us a call on (01865) 304 071 or head over to our contacts page and we’ll walk you through the process.

So, these flyers. The chances are that you’ve not seen a commercial printing press in action (although you may have checked out the video guide to magazine printing elsewhere on this site). If that’s the case there’s no need to worry, but just remember that a commercial press isn’t just a large-scale version of your desktop printer. One of the key differences is in the way that paper is supplied to the printing mechanism; at home you’ll likely have a stack of pre-cut A4 paper that you load into the bottom of the printer to be taken up sheet by sheet as you print. While this is fine for working at home it’s neither cost-effective, easily stored, nor quick enough when you start talking about lithographically or digitally printing thousands of products each day (think about how long your inkjet takes to produce a single full colour page – now imagine asking it to do that 5000 times…)

To keep costs down, a commercial printer will keep commonly used stocks (more jargon – it means ‘papers‘) either on tightly bound rolls or, less often, in huge single sheets. Your 5000 flyers won’t be printed on 5000 individual sheets of A6 card, but on a single sheet which will then be trimmed down to the right size at the end of the process. It’s this trimming process that makes a bleed absolutely necessary.

No matter how much we refine the print process, it can’t ever be made perfect. Paper is shuttling out of the print mechanism and into the cutter at a phenomenal speed, which means that a printer has a choice between slowing the process down to a crawl (which means you can wave goodbye to a decent turnaround time) or building an insurance policy into the process. Including a bleed on your artwork is this insurance policy – it will mean that you get perfect print every time, rather than risking borders that you didn’t want:

Adding a bleed to your design.

It’s a really simple process, and you should be thinking about it when you start doing your design. Speak to your printers early in the process and ask them what size bleed they require for your product. This can actually be a good way of gauging the quality of the printer you’ve chosen, as the better the printer the smaller the bleed they’ll require. The best printers will only need a 3mm bleed on most products (that’s 3mm on each side of the design), so if they ask for anything more you should perhaps be asking why they can’t deal with the industry standard – if they can’t give you a convincing answer then it might be worth looking for an alternative supplier.

When you start your design, size your document to the correct dimensions (A6 flyers are 105x148mm) and then add 6mm to both the height and width (that’s 3mm on both sides). So your A6 flyers will be 111x154mm with bleed. Some programs (Adobe InDesign is the standard) will ask you if you want to add a bleed when you open a new document:

If you can’t see the bleed & slug option click the button that says ‘More options’. It says ‘Fewer options’ in our image because we’ve already got all the options showing.

Simply tell InDesign that you want a 3mm (or whatever your printer has asked for) bleed on all sides and it will add a red box outside the limits of your document that shows you where the bleed extends to. Other programs, like Photoshop, aren’t as helpful – you’ll have to create the document at the correct size with bleed and then drag guides onto the document from the rulers at the side and top to remind you where the bleed area is. If you’re confused at this stage, give us a call on (01865) 304 071 and we’ll walk you through it.

What goes in the bleed?

Remember that the bleed area is designed to be cut off of the finished artwork – it’s just there to help the cutting mechanism line itself up. Therefore you shouldn’t put anything in the bleed area that you want to appear on your printed product (telephone numbers, emails, or any other details). What should be extending into the bleed is any image, background, or fill that is intended to extend right to the edge of your flyer. It really is as simple as that!

What if I don’t include a bleed?

It might be that you’ve already made your design up, and are only finding out that you should have included a bleed once it’s too late to resize everything. A friendly printer, like Pulse Print UK, will do what they can to help you out, but realistically the best that anybody is going to be able to do is enlarge the artwork you’ve supplied so that it’s big enough to be trimmed. This can lead to problems with resolution, which can make your printed design look pixelated. It can also lead to problems if you’ve got details that were already close to the edges of your design – that telephone number you put right at the bottom may well end up being cut off after all! A bleed is something that should really be added at the beginning of the process, trying to put it in once the whole design is done is generally a nightmare (incidentally, this sort of problem is as good a reason as any to consider getting your design done by a professional, 90% of the time it’s worth the little extra money you have to spend to be sure that you get something that looks great and won’t cause any delays in your printing).

In summary…

• Make sure that you ask your printer what bleed they require before you start your design. If you haven’t picked a printer yet assume that 3mm on all sides will be what you need (and get in touch with us!)

• Make sure that anything you want to extend all the way to the edge of your print product when you get it back extends all the way to the edge of the bleed when you send it to the printers.

• Keep anything that’s really important (contact details, logos, that kind of thing) away from the edge of the printable area. If it’s right at the limit of the printing area you could risk having a bit of it chopped off.

• Before you send anything to the printers, it’s worth having a final check that you’ve got everything right. Have a quick read of our guide to preparing your artwork for print.

Preparing Your Artwork For Print

2009-11-26T14:46:37Z

So you’ve taken some time getting your artwork pixel-perfect on screen, and you’re ready to go to print. That’s great news, but don’t think you’re done just yet! One of the most common problems disrupting an otherwise flawless print procurement process is artwork being supplied by clients that the printers just can’t deal with. If you’re supplying your own design for us to print it’s worth taking an extra five minutes just to make sure it’s absolutely right before you send it to us – after all, you’ve already done the hard part right!

First up…

There are a couple of things to think about before you even get started on your design work. If you get the preparation right then you’re more likely to avoid problems further on down the line.

• Before you get stuck in yourself, consider getting your design done by a professional. There’s a reason that people who design full time spend all their free time reading and working through manuals, tutorials and other references on the tools of their trade; and that’s because the more techniques you know, the better your chance of creating something that really pops off the page and catches the eye.

• If you can, try and use a professional design program (we use Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign mostly, but there are others out there – try Quark for layouts or GIMP for photo-editing). Most companies will let you try their products for about 30 days without charging you, so if you’re doing a one off project it’s definitely worth downloading a trial. Avoid using Microsoft Publisher, Word, or Powerpoint (really, try and avoid using anything created by Microsoft…) These programs are great for writing letters or creating slideshows, but they’re just not built for making print-ready designs. Using the right tools will make your job (and ours!) so much easier, and will ensure that your print comes back picture perfect.

How we do it.

Whenever we get a design sent through to be printed we automatically check for a few crucial elements that will make sure that it’s ready for print. If you’ve already done the checks yourself you’ll know that we’re not going to find any problems, and that means that you’re sure to get your print back on time and looking great.

You’re going to need to be checking the following things (remember, you can always give us a call on (01865) 596 262 or get in touch via our contacts page if you get stuck!)

• Image Size

• Document Bleed

• Resolution

• Colour Space

• Print Marks

• Document Format

Image Size

If you’re getting an A6 flyer printed up, then obviously your design is going to have to be A6 dimensions (that’s 105x148mm). If you get this wrong then you can end up with white borders left around the edges of your design, or bits chopped off – not such a problem if it’s only an unimportant bit of background detail, but a bit of an issue if you end up losing your contact number or email!

Before sending us your design, check what dimensions you should have (you can give us a call if you’re not sure) and double check that you’ve made the design the right size. This is easy in Photoshop, just go to the toolbar at the top, select the ‘Image’ drop down menu, and click on ‘Image Size’. This will give you all the information you need.

To help you out we’ve actually put together a list of common paper sizes, names, measurements and free templates.

Document Bleed

Unfortunately, that’s not it for checking your image size… Professional printers run the paper through their presses at incredibly high speeds, and it’s not possible to get the cutting mechanism to chop in the exact space every time. Printers get around this problem by asking that all designs feature what’s called a bleed. The bleed is an extra space outside the print area which shouldn’t contain any important information (as it’s designed to used as a reference point for the cutting mechanism, and will get cut off). Usually you’ll just have your background extend a little outside the print space – literally ‘bleeding’ off the edge – so that the cutting mechanism knows where to line up so that it can give you a perfect finish.

The best printers out there won’t ask for more than a 3mm bleed on all sides, so it’s worth keeping this in mind as an industry standard. What it means practically is that you need to add 6mm to the height and width of your design to make it print ready (that’s 3mm on each side), so the A6 flyer we mentioned earlier would actually need to have the dimensions 111x154mm, even though it will end up being 105x148mm after it’s cut. Make sure that you don’t put anything important into the bleed area, like image details or text that you want to appear on the final product, just think of it as your insurance policy against poor print – you shouldn’t notice it, but if you neglect it you might end up with a nasty surprise!

Resolution

Whether you’re thinking about the design as a whole, or your thinking about specific image elements that go to make it up, you need to be sure that you’ve got a high enough resolution to be recognised by a printer. Commercial printers work by spraying tiny spots of ink onto the page, adding layers to build up the final colour in any given spot. Your resolution settings tell the press how many spots to spray across a given area (industry standard is an square inch), and the more spots you tell the printer to put into that space, the better your image will end up looking. Again, you need to go with the industry standard, which is 300 dpi (dots per inch), if you try to send something through that’s at a lower resolution this is what will happen:

Low resolution – eek!

Much better at a higher resolution!

Standard screen resolution is 72 dpi, and programs which aren’t specifically built to create print ready images will often assume that this is the resolution you want to use when you start, so always make sure that you’ve manually set the resolution to 300 dpi before you send off your design. Resolution and print size are linked together, so be keep an eye on the size of your document when you adjust resolution, otherwise you’ll end up with something teeny that can’t be printed! You can read our article on pixels, dpi and print resolution explained, but generally just remember that your artwork needs to be the right size (including bleeds) at 300 dpi for it to be print ready. It’s not as complex as it looks, but give us a call on (01865) 304 071 if you get stuck!

To check the resolution in Photoshop, go back to the ‘Image Size’ menu that we looked at earlier and look in the field called ‘Resolution’, if it’s not 300 then you need to change it so that it is, which may mean changing your design to make it the right size after you’ve got it to the right resolution – another good reason to make sure that you’ve set the right resolution before you start working! Make sure that the tick box called ‘Resample Image’ is unticked before you change the resolution, otherwise Photoshop will try and automatically fill in the spaces between pixels when it changes the resolution. You’ll know if this happens, because it will look dreadful on screen!

Colour Space

Asking about “colour space” is just a fancy way of asking whether you’re going to be using your design online or in print. Images viewed on screen are made up of a mixture of Red, Green and Blue coloured light, so the colour space for onscreen images is called RGB. Printed images, on the other hand, get their colours from mixing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks, so they use the CMYK colour space (we know what you’re thinking, ‘K’ stands for ‘Key’)

Changing between the two colour spaces can produce some major shifts in how a colour appears, since the RGB colour space is capable of showing many more shades than CMYK. To avoid a shock when you get your print back, make sure that you’ve set the colour space of your design to CMYK before you send it off. To do this in Photoshop go to the ‘Image’ menu on the toolbar and select ‘CMYK Colour’ from the menu. As ever, it’s best to do this right at the beginning of your project, so that you avoid any problems later on.

Print marks

Some programs (including Adobe InDesign) will give you the option to include what they call ‘Printers Marks’ when you’re saving the image to send to a printer. It might seem like this is a good idea - after all, you’re sending the design to a printer, and these are marks for a printer, so why wouldn’t you include them? The short answer is that you should only include printers marks if you’ve been specifically asked to; otherwise you’re actually only sending through extra information that your printer doesn’t need, and that they’ll have to spend time getting rid of. At Pulse Print we don’t usually ask for printers marks to be included, and if we do need them we will always tell you when you’re placing your order.

Document format

Last, but not least, you need to decide how you’re going to supply your design to your printer. Printers will need a ‘flat’ image (one where none of the elements are editable any more, as they’ve all been fixed in place) to work from, which means you’ve got a choice between PDF and JPEG. Most printers will be happiest accepting a PDF, although you can usually supply a JPEG if that’s your only option – the key is to ask which is best. Whichever you pick, make sure that you’ve saved it at the highest possible quality before you send it off to the printers.

Flattening an image is a lot like taking a collage, where all the bits and pieces that make up the image as a whole can be moved around, and pressing a sheet of glass down over it, so that they’re fixed in place. To get your artwork flattened in Photoshop, head up to the toolbar and select the ‘Layer’ drop down menu. ‘Flatten Image’ is one of the menu options towards the bottom of the list; select it, save your document and you’re good to go!

Flyer Design Tips - Information is King

2009-11-07T13:25:28Z

Flyer printing is a great way to promote your business but only if the whole process, from design to distribution, is done properly. What’s more, poorly planned, designed, printed or distributed flyers usually end up in the bin so unless you’ve got money (and time) to burn it’s worth doing planning what information to put on your flyer before designing or printing it.

Quick Summary

Know and keep your flyer design, print and distribution relevant to your target markets. It is much better to print five sets of 1000, targeted flyers than 5000 generic ones.
Choose whether you want your flyer to advertise your products or advertise your brand (Brand Advertising vs Product Advertising). Note that for 95% of companies brand advertising is an expensive and pointless exercise.
Answers to the five most common questions you receive about your product/service as well as clear contact info should be the most prominent and obvious pieces of information on your flyers.
Include a flyer specific call to action on your flyer to help motivate responses to your campaign as well as create accurate ways to measure the success of your campaign.

Research your target markets

Knowing your key target markets is absolutely critical to launching a successful marketing campaign through any medium. This knowledge will be key in influencing every single decision you make during the flyer design process from choosing the information, sizes, colors and fonts of your flyers right through to the best times of day and places to distribute them. Target markets can be

In an ideal world the design and information on every single flyer you distribute would be tailored completely to the unique needs of the person to which it was delivered ensuring the maximum possible chance of a response to that flyer. Since this would prove an extremely expensive, time consuming and potentially impossible process we attempt to make generalizations about the needs, values and priorities of large groups of people based on certain key characteristics including age, sex, occupation, address, income, sexuality, race and religion. Each of these groups forms a potential target market however for each individual product, business, event or service there may be one or many groups who form that entity’s “key target markets”. These groups may be as general as “Men” or as specific as “Hispanic, middle class, 40 year old, married, Muslim, one-legged, housewives”.

Putting even a small amount of thought in to considering two or three of your businesses target markets will greatly improve the rate of success of your flyers and you will get far better returns by carefully designing and printing five sets of 1000 flyers each targeted specifically at the needs and circumstances of a different major market segment than you will by printing and distributing 5000 flyers all with generic information on them.

This is because people will naturally respond to information that appears to be more relevant to them whilst quickly discerning and discarding information that they perceive to be clearly generic. Changes can be either aesthetic or in content and can have a dramatic effect on the response percentages to your marketing giving you the edge over your less well prepared competition.

Brand Advertising vs Product Advertising

Brand advertising is advertising with a strong emphasis on the company brand (logo and/or company name) and is largely used in an attempt to generate good will toward a brand rather than advertise a product or service.

Whilst I agree that there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing your carefully designed logo take center stage on a flyer one of the hardest things to accept as a business owner is that unless you’re a global brand like Coca Cola potential clients care more about the products or service you provide than who you are or your company name and logo. In fact people largely couldn’t care less about your logo or name will first decide that your product is right for them first and then (and only then) will they have a look at your company to evaluate its values and relevance, to their goals. So, whilst the choice is yours it’s worth remembering that product advertising generally produces significantly greater returns on marketing investments than brand advertising.

The upshot of this is to remember that every extra millimeter of space that your logo and company name takes up on your promotional flyers is wasted space which would be much better put towards displaying relevant product and contact information.

What information to put on your Flyers

What are the five first and most common questions you receive about your product, service or event? These five pieces of information as well as clear contact information should form the key core of your flyer design. The most common five examples that I’ve encountered are:

What is it?
Where is it?
When is it?
How much does it cost?
How long does it take?

Contact information is vital. Provide at least two highly visible contact methods such as a phone number and email and then supplement them with as many other sensible methods as possible (address, skype name, mobile phone, website address). Getting the client to contact you is the hardest part of the whole marketing operation so make it as easy as possible to do. A great idea is to include a perforation on your flyer with all of your contact, coupon and information details on it. That way your clients can tear off and keep your flyer’s key information for later use in a bite sized, convenient and unique way.

Remember to make yourself an information checklist and check it. If your flyer doesn’t include this information then it is most likely going in the bin.

Include a motivational call to action

A critical part of a successful flyer is to actually motivate your clients to act on the carefully designed and researched information within. By offering a flyer campaign specific coupon discount code with a timed expiry date you create a strongly motivational call to action as well as a highly accurate means of judging the success of your flyer campaign.

Flyer Designing

In the next part of the series I’ll be covering the actual process of flyer designing in detail including:

Writing a design brief for yourself and others
DIY flyer designing tips and tricks
Choosing and contracting a professional designer
Working with your designer
Inspirational examples of excellent and innovative flyer designs
Professional, free and black listed flyer designing tools

If there’s any other information you’d like to see covered just let me know!

Awesome Tshirt Designs for Inspiration

2009-10-28T09:19:06Z

Thinking about printing you own custom Tshirts. Looking to put something new in your wardrobe? Check out this collection of awesome tshirt designs from accross the web. Remember, if you need a tshirt printed our prices start at just £1.50 per Tshirt. Get involved.

Custom Tshirt Printing

2009-10-26T12:17:49Z

Understanding how printers produce custom tshirts is the best and only way to make sure you walk away with a great product without a gaping hole in your wallet. If you can’t tell your screen printing and transfer printing from your vinyl transfers or direct to garment printing then this article is for you!

Pulse Print offers pricing from only £1.50 per tshirt and a minimum order of only one garment making us the first choice for high quality custom tshirt printing for hundreds of business and event managers. For quotes just give us a call on 01865 304 071 or check out our products page for more information.

There are four main processes used by manufacturers who print custom tshirts, these are:

Screen Printing
Transfer Printing
Vinyl Transfers
Direct to Garment Printing

Each of these four custom tshirt printing methods has its own strengths and weaknesses. These make them most suitable for different uses, production volumes and designs. Let’s take a look:

Screen Printing

Typical Use Resale and Commercial Sale TShirts

Best For High Volume (100 +), Low Colour Count Designs

Worst For Low Volume, Full Colour Designs

Screen printed tshirts are what you’ll most commonly pick up from the high street. This is because the production costs for high volumes of screen printed tshirts is very low. Designs are printed on to the tshirt with plasticol inks (which give a slightly coarse and rubbery texture) and sealed by a process called heat tunnel curing. The catch with screen printing is that each of the colours needs to be printed on to the tshirt separately, using its own unique screen. What’s more, each of these screens costs about £25 to set up. This means that whilst the cost of printing each tshirt can be measured in pennies (rather than the pounds associated with digital printing methods) this is often offset by the cost of setting up the plates. Consequently, set up costs are high and full colour printing nearly impossible.

In conclusion, if you’re looking to print a large number (100+) of high quality simple tshirts then screen-printing is your method of choice. For smaller or more complex custom tshirt printing runs, read on.

Transfer Printing

Typical Use Hen Party Tshirt / Stag Do Tshirt

Best For Small Volumes, Rectangular Designs, Smaller Budgets

Worst For High Volumes, Irregular Shapes, Large Blocks of Solid Colour

Remember those transfer tattoos you used to get in cereal packets? The cheap and cheerful option, high quality and professionally produced transfers are generally printed on a laser printer to prevent banding and applied to a tshirt using a high quality heat press (which basically amounts to a high tech iron) to ensure perfect adhesion. Whilst the final quality of a custom transfer printed tshirt usually far exceeds the often-promotional nature of products produced using transfer printing (i.e. Hen Nights, Stag Dos, Lads / Ladies on Tour, Promotional Events etc.) the quality produced would not normally be up to the standards expected by retail customers who are used to the finish and feel of screen printing.

Vinyl Transfers

Typical Use Uniforms and Workwear

Best For Work Wear, Simple Designs, Two or One Colour Designs

Worst For Complicated Designs, Full Colour Printing

Vinyl transfers produce perhaps the most durable custom printed tshirts of all the four main custom tshirt printing processes. Consequently, vinyl transfers are well suited to the production of custom work wear. A digitally-controlled cutter is used to cut a custom tshirt design from a vinyl sheet. This vinyl is then removed from its backing sheet and applied to the garment using a heat press. Vinyl is produced in a wide array of colours and is fantastic for simple solid colour designs. Placement is done by hand so vinyl transfer custom tshirt printing is not particularly well suited to designs with multiple colours or fiddly designs with small pieces such as logos or small writing.

Direct to Garment (DTG)

Typical Use Anything!

Best For Low-Medium Volume, Complex Designs, Full Colour Tshirt

Worst For Small Volume esp. on dark Tshirt

Direct to Garment (DTG) custom tshirt printing is the most recently developed method for creating custom tshirts. Tshirt are loaded onto a plate in a similar manner to screen-printing. Textile inks are physically printed onto the shirt using a dedicated inkjet printer.

DTG tshirt printing onto white garments is consistent, fairly rapid and inexpensive thanks to the fact that the designs have none of the physical set up costs of screen printing. Dark shirts do cause more of a problem as a white underbase needs to be created for the design to be printed on. As the printer prints the underbase only where needed, however, complex custom designs can still be printed with relative ease. The underbase does need a very tight weave of shirt to appear solid and so isn’t suitable for use on most polo tops and some shirts. In addition to this the application of the underbase slows down and increases the cost of the print process significantly. For most designs onto dark shirts screen-printing becomes the most economical print method at about 100 shirts. DTG t-shirt printers also struggle to print large blocks of solid colour, especially lighter colours, and also tend to over saturate the colours to some degree. DTG printing is a great new option for small run and complex designs but due to the problems it can encounter on some shirts and with some designs we’d advise having a test print before ordering a large run for resale.

The Last Word(s)

In conclusion I hope the above article has given you a good idea of the main processes which underlie the production of custom tshirts (as well as almost all other items of custom clothing). If I’ve missed anything out or you think I could have explained anything better you can give us a call on 01865 596 262 or leave a comment!

Just a quick note here from Rich.

Since Arthur wrote this article, we’ve reviewed a lot of our production processes, taking a look at what we could be really strong with, and having an honest think about jobs that we just don’t have the time or resources to do as well as we demand of ourselves. We concentrate on flyers, posters and booklets mostly; with each booklet or comic book being quoted individually so that it’s really tailored to you.

Obviously that kind of focus takes up a lot of our time, but we think it’s really important to do what we do as well as we can. The sad part of that is that it means that we can’t offer every product and process under the sun. What we’ve had to drop is DTG, Vinyl and Transfer printing. Unfortunately the only way to do these right every time is to do them exclusively, and that’s not something that we want to be doing when we could be helping our customers with their catalogues or magazines.

We still offer an awesome screen printing service, and of course we’re more than happy to help you with anything else; just get in touch!. We’re also happy to recommend suppliers if you do want a DTG printing service; people that we’ve worked with and trust to do your job perfectly for you. Again, just get in touch with me and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Video: Magazine Printing - How Stuff Works

2009-10-24T22:56:15Z

They say a picture speaks a thousand words but in my mind nothing beats a short explanatory video. Check out this great film from the guys at howstuffworks.com, despite the dated footage it covers many of the key concepts of lithographic and web printing!